The present invention pertains to a railroad rail profile measuring system for use in the development of a rail grinding pattern.
Railroad rails over the course of time, due to the severe conditions and forces to which they are subjected, are deformed from their original desired configuration. The particular deformations at any point in the rail is varied depending on many factors, such as loads applied to the rails and amount of track curvature. Left unchecked, the shape of the rail degrades to a point wherein replacement is necessary. Rail replacement is an extremely costly and time consuming task which is best delayed as long as possible.
Profile rail grinding has gained increased popularity in the last several years as an effective procedure lengthening the usable life of the rail. In particular, maintenance or preventive grinding eliminates potential defects in the rail's profile before they develop to any significant extent. This approach not only increases the rail's useful life, but also actually decreases the number of grinding passes which must be made on the rail over a length of time.
However, in order to effectively employ such preventive grinding, the rail profile must first be accurately measured and analyzed. In the past, measuring devices have provided a complex arrangement of sensors clustered about the rail to take measurements of the rail head configuration. An example of such a device is disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 4,577,494, Mar. 25, 1986 to Jaeggi, and entitled APPARATUS AND METHOD FOR MEASURING THE WEAR OF RAILROAD RAIL. While such a device provides the needed information, the complexity of the sensing apparatus causes the cost of manufacturing and maintenance requirements to be high.
Also, systems utilizing complex arrangements of cameras and strobe lights, and large arrays of computers have been recently developed to measure the profile of the rail. However, due to the complexity of the system, the costs have thus far been prohibitively high. Moreover, the obtained results have failed to be consistently accurate.